As part of its Virtual Think Tank series focusing on supporting the success of underserved students, this session will offer a new institutional framework for integrating diversity and equity, publicly engaged scholarship, and student success initiatives with each other and with higher education’s core values. Sturm and Eatman will describe the building of an architecture of full participation on campus—a process for building these values and practices into the hardwiring of institutions to enable people, whatever their identities or institutional positions, to realize their capabilities." They will be sharing narratives of individual publicly engaged scholars and institutional/community partnerships that actively engage in advancing full participation. They will connect these examples to a broader theory of action. They will also show how this framework is responsive to the legal risks exemplified by the Fisher case -- the affirmative action case currently before the Supreme Court.

This free Virtual Think Tank series is designed to support the efforts of college and university practitioners engaged in campus-wide efforts to support the success of underserved students, including students of color, students who are first in family to attend college, and those from low-income backgrounds. These virtual discussions are intended to be immediately useful whether participants are developing long-term strategic change efforts or thinking about immediate programming and teaching issues.

Presenter:Timothy K. EatmanAssistant Professor of Higher EducationCo-Director, Imagining America:Artists and Scholars in Public Life

Presenter: Susan SturmGeorge M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social ResponsibilityDirector of the Center for Institutional and Social Change,Columbia Law School

About the Presenters:

Tim Eatman is the recipient of the Early Career Research Award recognizing outstanding early career contributions to scholarly endeavors addressing service-learning and community engagement. Dr. Eatman is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Syracuse University and serves as Director of Research for "Imagining America: Artist and Scholars in Public Life." An educational sociologist, Tim conducts research on policy and practice to support publicly engaged scholarship as well as a range of equity issues in higher education related to the access and success of traditionally underrepresented groups. Tim holds degrees from Pace University (B.S.), Howard University (M.Ed.), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Ph.D.). He serves on several boards, including most recently the Syracuse-based Friends of the Central Library, which presides over the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series.

Susan Strum is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the founding director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She has published numerous articles, case studies and books on “the architecture of inclusion,” institutional change, transformative leadership, workplace equality, legal education, and inclusion and diversity in higher education. Sturm is the principal investigator for a Ford Foundation grant awarded to develop the architecture of inclusion in higher education. She has worked with numerous research and educational organizations and networks seeking to build the knowledge and capacity needed to advance full participation and exercise leadership in addressing important problems. She is currently co-chairing a working group on Transformative Leadership, as part of a Ford Foundation funded project on Building Knowledge for Social Justice. Her research on strategies for facilitating constructive multi-racial interaction in police training is featured on the Racetalks website, www.racetalks.org. Professor Sturm was one of the architects of the national conference on The Future of Diversity and Opportunity in Higher Education. In 2007, she received the Presidential Teaching Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia.